FROM BARBARA OLSON'S BOOK: In August 1999 Clinton pardoned 16 FALN terrorists without even being asked, in a move that was widely seen as a cynical ploy to win Hispanic votes for his wife's New York Senate bid.
The group had planned and executed 130 bombing attacks on New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., from 1974 to 1983. Miraculously, the FALN managed to kill just six Americans.
But hundreds more were seriously wounded. Law enforcement officials were stunned when Clinton decided to pardon the FALN bombers. "The FBI's assistant director of national security, Neil Gallagher, said that the people turned loose by Clinton 'are criminals, and they are terrorists, and they represent a threat to the United States,'" Olson wrote. In a subchapter eerily headlined "Pardons for Terrorists Send a Signal," she reported: "President Clinton had not bothered to consult with relatives of victims of FALN terrorism. In fact, the survivors of those murdered and those whose lives had otherwise been destroyed by the terrorists were not even informed that their attackers were being released." Olson continued: "Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder ... conceded that the nation owed much greater consideration to the victims. And Holder's boss, Janet Reno, explicitly acknowledged that groups aligned with the FALN still posed a threat to national security."
In comments turned gut-wrenching in light of last month's attacks, former Justice Department pardon attorney Margaret Love told the late author that Clinton's terrorist pardons should have set off alarm bells. "We should have seen a big flashing red light because of the FALN cases. ...
That was a foreshoadowing of what happened later." Love was referring to Clinton's January 2001 pardons of drug dealers and international fugitives, not the attacks on the U.S., which no one foresaw. But it's nearly impossible now to read those words as anything but prophecy of the terrorist acts that murdered Olson and nearly 6,000 others (Sept 11).
Thanks Liz, it's good not to forget. I miss Barbara Olson, she was a breath of fresh air.